However, the picture for gold’s longer-term prospects seems very encouraging. According to Nicholas Larkin, writing for Bloomberg in London, “Investors are accumulating enough bullion to fill Switzerland’s vaults twice over as gold’s most-accurate forecasters say the longest rally in at least nine decades has further to go no matter what the economy holds.”

Gold:
Spot gold prices opened this week at $1,238.50. The high during the week was on Wednesday, September 1st, at $1,256.60, while the low for the week occurred on Tuesday, August 31st, at $1,233.50. Gold ended the week up $8.70 at $1,247.20. This week, popular gold bullion products were 2010 1 oz. Gold American Eagles, 1 oz. Gold Maple Leafs and 1 oz. APMEX Gold Bars.

Featured Bullion Product:
Each week, APMEX will review a different bullion product for the benefit of our readers. This week, we will review the Palladium Canadian Maple Leaf coins.

The Palladium Maple Leaf is the first palladium product introduced by the Royal Canadian Mint. While palladium bullion coins are not new to the market, the $50 Canadian Palladium Maple Leaf is the world’s first regularly issued palladium bullion coin.

Struck .9995 fine, each coin bears the familiar standard Maple Leaf reverse design, giving this lustrous coin both investor and numismatic value. These Maple Leaf coins are only struck in a One Troy Ounce size. During the testing process for the Palladium coin, coins were tested on two different Palladium blanks. These blanks had been identified as Lot “A” and Lot “B”. From these blanks, 290 test coins were struck. They were struck with a mintmark to attest to their authenticity. All of the test coins struck from Lot A were identified with an “A” mintmark, and all test coins struck from Lot B were given a “B” mintmark. These coins were available for purchase through a draw held by the Royal Canadian Mint.